


The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

by loveinadoorway



Series: Want an axe to break the ice [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:39:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveinadoorway/pseuds/loveinadoorway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First part of the series of "whatever Sherlock did between the Reichenbach Falls and The Empty Hearse and continuing to His Last Vow".<br/>And Peter O'Toole just died and all.... and I had a serious Errol Flynn relapse and everything.<br/>So, all quotes and the title are from either Lawrence of Arabia, or Kipling's Kim. The movies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

Afghanistan. Of all places.

He was so badly sunburnt, there were blisters on his skin, filled with fluid. Surely, this would take down his life expectancy another notch. Malignant melanoma. And he hadn’t even begun to contemplate the sanitary situation.

_Prince Feisal: No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing._

God, he needed to get out of here. At the moment, all his mind palace would yield were quotes from Lawrence of Arabia. And he wasn’t even remotely in the proper location for it. Not by a long stretch. The quote, of course, was absolutely fitting, giving his current location.

He sat alone, hiding in a cluster of rocks on the Khyber Pass. No vegetation, no water. Had a distinctly Kipling kind of a feel to it. Reminded him of everything he had loved as a boy. Adventures in alien places. He had read the books and watched the movies, Lawrence, Kim, the lot.

Okay, mind palace did Kim now, too. The movie, not the book – not a good sign.

Only, the horse trader he was thinking about constantly had no red beard. In fact, he had no beard at all, nor would he ever be so stupidly misguided as to sport one. Okay, not a horse trader, either, but come on, who DIDN’T have a crush on Errol Flynn one point or another in their lives, eh?

_Kim: He who travels alone travels fastest.  
Mahbub Ali, the Red Beard: But not as safely_

Yeah, travelling alone was… should be… used to be what he knew best.  
But no adventure story he had wolfed down as a kid ever prepared him for the crushing sense of loneliness he felt now.

He used to be self-reliant. Self-sufficient. A million expressions that started with self. But all he could think about at this very moment, when he should concentrate on an Afridi tribesman, who just happened to work on an important bit of computer code in Moriarty’s elaborate plan, was a pair of blue eyes and the man who would be waiting for him when he got home.

The Afridi would be by, his sources had insisted, yesterday. Today, at the latest. Tomorrow, you know, if shit went wrong.

Sherlock Holmes fingered the sniper rifle in his hands. He knew the math, of course. He was a superb shot, truth be told. Just not exactly on live targets. He had never enjoyed hunting. Never thought, despite of everything everybody was always calling him, that living, breathing beings had been put on this earth for his entertainment. Not that he had ever thought killing was entertainment in the first place. But now the entire operation hinged on him being able to pull off a shot that most snipers would balk at.

Very well.

_Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown!  
T.E. Lawrence: Ah, well, we can't all be lion tamers._

He could pull off the impossible.  
After all, he HAD bedded Dr. John Watson.  Expertly.  
Well, expertly enough to be filled with an unsuitable desire to do a nah-nah-nah-nahnahnah dance for everyone who had ever called him a virgin to his face. Or behind his back, for that matter.

Knowing that John had been stationed here somehow made this whole thing so much harder. He had been able to shove him to the back of his mind ruthlessly at the beginning of his campaign, but the longer this entire mess took, the harder it got to keep his mind on the mission.

Lately, he had only been able to sleep if he thought about John and their life together at 221b Baker Street. The last few nights had been totally occupied by the days right before he had made his first move, surprising both John and himself, truth be told.

God, he needed to hydrate. Water was precious and he only had about half a gallon left – and there was no way of telling how long he would still sit here, silent and unmoving between the rocks, blending in completely with the environment.

It had been a cold day, yes, thinking of that would help with the heat. A cold, windy day in London. They had just solved a case. Did it really matter what it had been all about? To Sherlock at least, the cases lost every interest, every importance, once they were solved.

He had still been surfing that short-lived high of having been right and having been faster than anyone else and doing, frankly, what no one else could ever do. And  he’d dragged John into a victory dance of sorts. They had spun until they had stopped, breathless and dizzy and Sherlock had crushed the smaller man to him, had drawn him into a bruising kiss, before his damned brain had had any say in the matter.

_Mahbub Ali, the Red Beard: When a colt is born to be a polo pony, I think it would be a crime to bind him to a heavy cart._

Shit, there was the caravan.

Sherlock instantly relegated everything else to the back seat and took aim. Thank God Mycroft’s intel was stellar, as usual. He could easily make out his target and without a moment’s hesitation, he took him out. And then he ran.  
Again, thanks to Mycroft and his network, his exit was just as it had been described to him. He ducked into the small, well-hidden cave and was gone from all hostile eyes.

Of course, in theory, the hostile eyes were supposed to move on after a brief search, not camp right in front of the bloody cave, weren’t they?

It would be a miserable night. He had a blanket, what was left of his water and some stale bread.  
But he also had his secret weapon.  
John.

After that kiss, he had instinctively known they would both find a way to rationalize what had happened and the moment would be gone forever. So instead of pulling back and observing, judging, gauging if the other man was down with the program as he would usually do, he just pushed.

And John had answered, thrust by thrust, moan by gut-wrenching moan. And Sherlock had been happy.  
Just this once, he had felt like a human being. Like he actually understood how people interacted.

_Mr. Dryden: Lawrence, only two kinds of creature get fun in the desert: Bedouins and gods, and you're neither. Take it from me, for ordinary men, it's a burning, fiery furnace._

The caravan had been gone by morning. He had started the long haul to the meeting point. Two days, tops.

Took him three. The water had run out a day ago.  
He was stumbling, not entirely sure where, still hoping in the general direction of where his pick-up was supposed to be.

His mind was filled with pictures of his long, white fingers doing things to John. Filled with the sound of John’s moaning. Filled with the scent of the other man’s arousal.

There were dark, moving shapes in front of him. He was actually too far gone to care if they were friend or foe.

He heard someone say “Sir?” and took that to mean the shapes were friendly.

But all he could think of was John.  
He needed him.  
Soon. Often. Constantly.

Forever.

It was all that kept him going.


End file.
